I’ve launched four startups, and my kids are well aware of the investors my life spins around, and the startup that has good days when my employees are at the farm and work feels like a party, and bad days where I pretend I don’t even work at my own company because I’m so sick of the pressure. Sometimes the kids have a hard time grasping, though, how I make money. They watch Sky Does Minecraft’s YouTube channel with his ten million subscribers and my kids say, “How do you make money when you don’t even have a million subscribers?!?!”

I have found a few ideas that have been really effective in teaching my kids how to run their own company. Here’s what I’d recommend you try with your kids:

1. Treat the business like a science experiment.Starting a business is really like running an experiment. For older kids, you can give them the book The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. This is the current Bible of Silicon Valley founders. The idea is that you launch a business, see what doesn’t work and what might work better and then you try again. And you just keep trying. Getting to success is a process of trial and error. Asking questions is the most difficult part of running an experiment. With each iteration of your kid’s company, remind them to ask, “What will we learn from trying this?” The best entrepreneurs have been asking great questions their whole lives.

2. Let your kid face failure.Almost all entrepreneurs fail many times before they get it right. Which means the skill of bouncing back from failure is very important. It’s great for kids to experience the sick-to-your-stomach feeling that you’re failing again. But it’s hard for parents to watch that. So kids should practice where the stakes are lower. There is rarely $2 million in funding in the land of kid-led companies, but a lemonade stand that requires earning only $5 to get to break-even is a great kid-target. You might be tempted to get your friends to stop by for a ten-cent cup, but you’d helping more by consoling a failed business owner than by stacking the deck to ensure the $5 goal is met.

3. Start in the real world.The most successful online businesses are services—like ADP.com—something that solves many problems at once for the customer, and saves tons of time. Another lucrative area online are information products—like the courses on Quistic—that are inexpensive to deliver and have zero inventory costs. The problem is that kids don’t think in terms of information products. Kids think in terms of video games and iPads. Kids live in the physical world of swords and skirts and soccer fields. So when you help your kid set up a business, think of more physical attributes of a business that are not expensive but are meaningful. Get business cards, get a big sign with the company name. These are things that are easy to order, don’t cost much, and go a long way to make a new businesses owner feel legit.

4. Don’t forget hard labor.My son sold sweet corn this year, but only after he hand-weeded the field so we could try growing organic. When my son was figuring out the pricing of his corn, he took into account that he hated weeding. We gave him a way to figure out how to value his time based on his labor. So many grown-ups forget this part of the business model. What my son discovered is that the profit margin on sweet corn is slim. But remember, each business idea is an experiment and he’s looking at the profit margins for strawberries now instead.

5. Be a co-founder.The best odds for succeeding in business come from having a co-founder. So teach your kid how to be a team player.

Find a business you can operate that is well-suited to adults who have kids and then involve the kid in running the business. A company like surveybee, for example, has tons of ways for parents to make money that might seem small at first, but if you involved your kid in the project as well, then the money earned feels much more significant.

I’ve spent many hours sitting with my kids waiting for a judge’s seal of approval or a waiting for a banker to get a kid’s bank account working. I’ve sat through pig shows, and egg collecting, and garage sales my son piled high with all the books I saved for my daughters before I knew I wasn’t having one. So much of launching a businesses is working hard and then waiting. It’s hard to wait. Especially when you’re excited. Do that with your kid to let him know he’s not alone.

And remember that entrepreneurship is ultimately about being your best self. Which is completely consistent with homeschooling, of course, but totally inconsistent with a parent living their startup dreams through their kids.

Like all good aspects of self-directed learning, launching a business is much more exciting if the kids take the lead. So let them.

Comments (24)

This is what I really like in the USA: the entrepreneur spirit, here in Europe,we don’t think the same way… When in the movies we see American kids selling limonade or staff like that, my kids want to do the same, but just try it and police will come and tell me what kind of mother I am and that it’s forbitten to make kids work :-(… My oldest son made bracelets two years ago and decided to sell them on the beach to the tourists, some of them bought one, but one asked him where were his parents, if he was from Romania and wanted to call the police to “help him to escape from this horrible situation”. Because we make homeschool and it’s not legal in Spain, we don’t want any problem… A pity. I like your blog. You’re brillant!

I’d like to share with you, something that changed my life was thinking in terms of “I can’t do xyz because of all these reasons” to “how can I do xyz? What would I need to make it happen? How can I make those things come together?”

And I’d just play with it, even in my sleep and lucid dream to problem solve. It was a good mental exercise until it became normal to think that way.
Nothing that I want hard enough seems out of reach anymore.

I find this aspect of living in Europe frustrating as well. The general attitude of people is that children should never be seen anywhere in public during school hours, because if they are, it’s a red flag for a “neglected child”. I try to teach my boys independence on various levels. So if we go out grocery shopping, and they want to visit the toy shop, or go explore a different part of the shop, I let them. If they find something they want to buy, they have to calculate everything themselves and use their own money. When they go through their own checkout queue alone, they often get the “Where are your parents?” question…even though they are completely capable to doing all of this themselves. It’s frustrating, but we just try to ignore it and carry on as normal as best we can. But we have the luxury of living in one of the few EU states that DOES allow homeschooling…so I understand why you would choose to lay low.

Yes… Because we’re French living in Spain some people just think we’re tourists if we’re on the beach during “school time”, but I prefer don’t go out those hours, just in case… My yougest son is going to school from last year, he likes it, but my oldest son (14) is gifted and school was always a bad experience, included the school where is little brother is going now, so we homeschool. The law in Spain forces you to send your kids to school until they are 16… So we still have almost two years before being free :-)

I’ve learned to say, “Thank you for being concerned about the safety of my child. They are taken care of and OK. We don’t need to do anything different at the moment, but again thanks for your concern.”

That settles it.

(I could get into how this came about (child asking questions to a keeper at a shop/child paying his own bus fare/ child window gazing) , but as the other posters suggest people here are the parenting police- everywhere)

Wow, I am not a mother yet, but I really enjoyed reading his article, It all makes sense. It’s sad that in many countries homeschooling is prohibited, I feel the interest of governments sometimes is directed only on how to train kids through school systems, be just one more fish into the can.

I was a nervous wreck all the time. The sick-to-my-stomach feeling was so normal to me as a kid. But my parents always tried to get me to have lower standards so I would get rid of my anxiety. The message I got was: it’s not normal or okay to feel this way.

Now that I am older, as I get that feeling again, I just know that I’ve been through it so many times and that I’ve always found a way to turn the tide on my favor and come out on top.

I wish that instead of dismissing it my story had been one of learning to row with it. But I am for sure not letting this repeat itself with my kids!

Impressive stuff. Terrific examples. I think Mark Cuban’s little ebook (“How to Win At The Sport of Business”) is great for kids (and adults) when it comes to entrepreneurship. BTW, he doesn’t believe in taking ANY outside capital, ever.

Teaching kids how to be more proactive and business-minded is something I have been trying to do for long time. I like your ideas, above all, the idea about treating the business or venture like a science experiment.

Also, in my opinion, to make our kids understand that every setback or failure in business is something super common and natural is a valuable lesson that they must learn in order for them to move forward.
Thank you for sharing your ideas. Keep up the good work!

My nearly 3 year-old’s favorite book is ‘people at work’. Sometimes she wants to work at the park and pass out balloons. Or brush goats at the zoo.

My husband and I are both freelancers and entrepreneurial. I tell her we like to work on her computers, but she can find something else to do if she wants. I know she can’t understand it all yet – but I tell her she doesn’t have to wait until she’s big, that she can find something to work on when she’s little and make money if she wants to. Or not. I tell her we work from home and anywhere we are – but that other people work in “the big office” ( a place my husband goes once a week). We tell her to pick something she likes, that sometimes it might feel a little boring, but should mostly be fun.

My kids ask me all the time if they can start a business. Garage sale, jewelry, restaurant, selling baked goods, etc. I’ve never really know how to handle it, but your perspective is very enlightening. Thank you!